Four months in the marina and yard at Pangkor and now we have escaped at last. We are on our way to Langkawi and will continue to Thailand before our visas expire in December. The work is not finished and I’m sure will continue over the next year, the trouble with buying second-hand boats, old equipment fails, normal maintenance which has been neglected while the boat has been up for sale needs to be carried out. Of course, everything takes longer than planned.
We needed to get visa extensions and this meant a trip to Ipoh, 2 hours by car, to visit the main immigration office so we hired a car for a week drove to Ipoh armed with paperwork prepared for us by Ruz in the marina office and after about 2 hours wait had extensions for two months. The reason for taking a car for a week was to get a break from the marina. We booked accommodation in the Cameron Highlands and drove up there from Ipoh.
The Cameron Highlands are a hill station area where the expat Brits used to go to escape from the heat on the coast, it’s also an area of tea plantations and fruit and vegetable production. The tourist photos of the area show vast acreages of tea, what they fail to show are the equally vast areas of poly tunnels and the high-rise hotels and apartments. The drive up from Ipoh was depressing dusty roads, heavy traffic and poly tunnels covering the hillsides. Once at the top we drove through built up areas until we arrived at Tana Rata and our accommodation at Bala’s Holiday Chalet. This had been recommended by another cruiser, handy for the town and yet not high rise. It was an old schoolhouse which has been extended with terraces of ‘chalets’ up the hill side, pleasantly styled in keeping with the original building, of course we were at the top level. It was very quiet and quite comfortable. 

 

Bala's Holiday Chalets and our terrace of chalets at the top level.

 

Wildlife around the chalets. One non-poisonous snake and a millipede, unfortunately the beautiful honey eater bird flew too fast to be photographed.

We were able to visit the tea plantations and do some easy jungle walks within a short drive.

 

Acres of tea, and jungle walks close to town

After three nights here we returned to Pangkor by a southerly route which was much more pleasant.
We have now finished the wiring of Meikyo replacing the American sockets and forty-year-old cable. We have had more battery issues and Larry and his band of local electricians have spent hours on board sorting them. As we were preparing Meikyo to leave we tried to use the windlass to re-stow our anchor chain, it wouldn’t run. There appeared to be a problem with the solenoid switch, Larry supplied a new one and it still wouldn’t work. We needed to connect the start battery and house batteries together to give enough power. In the end Larry discovered that another component had failed on the house battery control and so we were trying to run the windlass off the solar panels! The system seems over complicated and may be changed slightly over time.
We left the marina and anchored out overnight before setting off for Penang and after one more overnight stop arrived at Straits Quay Marina yesterday afternoon, 80 miles done from Pangkor and 60 miles to go to Langkawi.